STORIES FROM
EUROPE

However, I return to a very creative community of missional people, many of whom live together in the forest, where they have built a tiny house for me. It’s actually a round hobbit house, built of love and stone by Ukrainians, embedded into the hillside.

I am excited about living in it and reconnecting to the community and participating in the ecosystem of ministries that have arisen in my absence, including a number of businesses in printing, hospitality, and catering, currently employing about 100 people, a quarter of whom are recent Ukrainian refugees.

Our four years of ministry in Prague were an exciting time for us. People flew from around the world to join us and when our little communist-era “panelaky” apartment could no longer accommodate the 13 people who lived there, we rented a huge house we called the Giant Peach.

One of our events at the Giant Peach for networking global missionaries was called “Bohemian Rapture”. We launched it by renting a go-cart track so mission leaders could meet each other in a different way. First place was awarded to the Kiwi Mark Pierson from Cityside Baptist in Auckland.

The worship installation event we did that weekend at the Giant Peach was really quite memorable, including an opera singer from Germany, a VJ multi-media team from Switzerland and culminating in a surprise wedding in the backyard under a tree decorated with paper cranes. The couple who were married, Derek and Amy Chapman, actually lived in our panelaky as singles, got married in our back yard and are now considering moving into our community in the forest. Derek once co-wrote a book with his father called “The Five Love Languages for Children”.

Our Friday night pizza parties at the Giant Peach launched a number of churches. And the Giant Peach was able to host a Bible translator who we called “the Scribe in the Basement”. His name was Sasha and we started a church together in a heavy metal club in Prague that eventually moved from pub to pub and still exists today as a pub church.

Certain parts of the new Czech Bible were released as evangelistic events. The Pentateuch had its own release party in the Czech Parliament. The New Testament was read aloud by famous actors in downtown Prague, and by pedestrians who joined the queue to help the reading, which took about 19 hours. The Song of Solomon event I remember fondly, an event with actors in a lush bedroom and the book illustrated with the sensual paintings of Marc Chagall. (Including the one below).

I greatly value your prayers as I return. One of my goals will be to help Prague become a Europe-wide mission training base for micro-churches and also digital ministry. There is so much potential.

The words of the late Czech president Vaclav Havel, in his 1990 New Year's address to the nation, have inspired me.

“We are a small country, yet at one time we were the spiritual crossroads of Europe. Is there a reason why we could not again become one?

By Andrew Jones, New Zealand candidate for Prague

Originally published on Missions Interlink — May 8, 2025: https://hail.to/missions/publication/9n9qAXd/article/ET4b4Fi